Skycall - Rook Island

About Rook Island:
This demo is meant to allow you to explore bird flight with the closest possible experience. To gain altitude you will have to flap, once you gain enough speed you will glide and steer with tilt and yaw like you used to as a kid imagining you were a bird/airplane.

All the instructions on flight are included in the Documentation, check out the flapping video below for an example of controlled flight.

Flapping Video:

Can you find all the eggs? How good of a bird are you really? These very important questions in life need answers!

Hi getnamo, sadly I'm not able to try this out properly as my Hydra's on the fritz. Something big is rattling around inside one of the controllers. My wings kept awkwardly folding up in front of me so I really couldn't do much (I'm pretty sure it's my Hydra that's the problem).

While I was inside, I was in awe of the beautiful landscape and I can't wait to actually fly around it and be a gunter.

One thing I would suggest though, is that when first trying this, my Hydra controllers were switched left/right and the game did not like this at all. Spinning around and wings bent badly. Then I remembered that someone noticed that the triggers are actually labeled left/right so I fixed that. Still couldn't do much with my Hydra breaking down, though.

I don't have the Hydra controllers so can't try this but the concept is awesome.
Flap you arms and then glide around - if money wasn't a problem at the moment I would buy the Hydras just to experience this.

Hi getnamo, sadly I'm not able to try this out properly as my Hydra's on the fritz. Something big is rattling around inside one of the controllers. My wings kept awkwardly folding up in front of me so I really couldn't do much (I'm pretty sure it's my Hydra that's the problem).
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If you have something rattling inside your hydra, your counter weights may have been dislocated. That may affect your tracking, but there may be another solution, try this: launch MotionCreator 2 and select Tools->Run Simple3d. This will show a 1:1 display of your hydras' position and orientation. Move the suspect controller around and see if its accurate, now wiggle or slightly bend the wire coming from the controller. If you see it jump you will find the exact bend that causes this and you may be able to fix it by forcing the wire the other way. A slightly forceful reverse twist worked for me when my right controller started acting up.

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One thing I would suggest though, is that when first trying this, my Hydra controllers were switched left/right and the game did not like this at all. Spinning around and wings bent badly. Then I remembered that someone noticed that the triggers are actually labeled left/right so I fixed that. Still couldn't do much with my Hydra breaking down, though.

Can't wait for STEM!

I agree, I'll take a look into making the controllers hand-agnostic; with STEM controllers the tracker can be swapped around so this will be a required feature. The hydras are unbeatable in terms of accuracy but the wireless upgrade will hopefully solve a lot of issues with build quality

To wrap it up, this is a must have for those of you with both the Hydras and the Rift. Would definitely pay to play a full version of this. I'll be adding it to my list of Rift demos to show people just one of the amazing things that this technology can do.

Really great idea. Most compelling experience in the rift yet, even though I had a bit of a time getting the hydra from getting yanked off the table. Had to feed the controllers through my shirt to keep things under control. Awesome work :!:

Just amazing - this is my personal Rift-Hydras killer app! The purest flight sim you can imagine, both in first and third «person» view. This thing has lots of potential: with next gen Rift its beauty will shine even more. And, as someone already pointed out, an excellent workout - I can wholeheartedly recommend it for your body and soul!

@mbdarr004, deHavilland, pinging
Awesome feedback, glad you liked it, there is definitely more to come 8-).

@Ananas
Regarding the quality, Rook Island is a bit heavy on polygons and shader complexity, it's a fault of me being still fairly new at art creation, for future releases I'm aiming for 60fps+ for cards with 1.8TFlops+ (PS4 level/ roughly your GPU). In meantime try tweaking Data/UDKGame/Config/DefaultSystemSettings.ini maybe some settings I've missed will increase FPS.

@caine
Thanks for the in-depth look at rook island, loved your aerial shots and dives (need to clean up some transitions and animations though ), great vids and hope to see you again at the Riftmax theatre!

I wanted to do a simple update of Rook Island to DK2, but it looks like there are no plans for UDK to be DK2 compatible, so this will require a full rewrite in UE4.

Skycall for UE4 is in the pipeline but may take some time as the graphical requirements of open landscapes together with 75fps dictate a simpler design. In addition the game will come out with out of box support for the Thalmic Myo.

It was discontinued a year ago, looks like people are holding on to them. Probably any used ones get sold pretty fast.

Yeah this is unfortunate, I've been taping my hydra to keep them working (wire mounting seemed to be the weak spot for my hydras). In terms of vr controllers, you can get a Myo which is available now, or if you wish to wait quite a few controllers are coming out within 2014Q4/2015Q1. Currently working on abstracting input hardware from a unified data structure (Body Input) which developers will be able to access in UE4. This should broaden the possible controllers you can use with apps without giving developers a headache of supporting each individually.

So any news? I really miss the workout! But I won't miss the cabling mess when I can use Touch or Vive controllers. Soon I even get the wireless modul for the Vive, so I'd feel completely free ─ like a bird!